Previously sailed on various P & O cruises but over the years their service and cut backs has put us off so we had heard from friends that Cunard was better. We love dressing up and the four formal evenings are what we wanted. They insist on smart dress on all other nights, men wear jackets to dinner. Again we haven’t a problem with this. However, what we do object to is 15% surcharge on all drinks! The wine at dinner is unbelieveably expensive. Cheapest bottle of wine $29 plus the 15% surcharge! Bring your own wine and you pay a $20 corkage fee plus 15%! Did notice that quite a number of guests at dinner were not drinking. Meals are what you used to call ‘nouveau cuisine’ and although quite different, sometimes not very appetising. Coach from ship to port entry at Barcelona cost $6 each way per person. What they failed to tell you is that there is a local cruise bus which cost 4euro’s both ways and are regular. Shows on the whole are weak. On P & O we had celebrity guests. Not so on Cunard. Took trip to Pisa. Amazing place but..........no time to visit inside, Baptist, catherdral or the leaning tower. 50 mins all we had to look around outside. Far too many crowds to visit inside any of these attractions in the time allocated. Although entry to catherdral was free, you had to queue for a ticket to enter at a separate location, then queue to enter building. It could have been organised that tickets could have been obtained in advance so as guest could visit the catherdral directly. Would we use Cunard again, possibly not. The biggest bug bear is that they rip you off at every turn more so than P & O. Plus we still have to pay the service charge at the end of the cruise at $11.50 per person, per day. What the icing on the cake was that we paid nearly £6,000 for two. A couple on our table was on the same floor and with the same view & balcony who paid £2500 for the same cruise. If I had a cake, I would have dropped my head into it! (Purple Bricks ad - lol)
Very nice. Large TV but channels could do better. Also quite often channels breaks up and pixelates.
Didn’t go into port but went to Pisa and wine tasting.